The new Premier League campaign starts off this Saturday. Rather than a fantasy soccer league, which I personally find to be kind of dull, we'll have a league prediction contest. After the jump are the teams and rules.
| Team | Previous Finish |
|---|---|
| Arsenal | 4 |
| Aston Villa | 9 |
| Blackburn Rovers | 15 |
| Bolton Wanderers | 14 |
| Chelsea | 2 |
| Everton | 7 |
| Fulham | 8 |
| Liverpool | 6 |
| Manchester City | 3 |
| Manchester United | 1 |
| Newcastle United | 12 |
| Norwich City | 2 (Championship) |
| Queens Park Rangers | 1 (Championship) |
| Stoke City | 13 |
| Sunderland | 10 |
| Swansea City | 3 (Championship) |
| Tottenham Hotspur | 5 |
| West Bromwich Albion | 11 |
| Wigan Athletic | 16 |
| Wolverhampton Wanderers | 17 |
Now for the scoring - I have an idea, but I'm not sold on it. So here's my ideas, and if you have an suggestions or tweaks, please speak up. I'm thinking 3 points for being dead-on and 1 for being off +/- 1. Bonus point each for predicting the title winner and relegated teams.
You have until 10 AM Central Saturday to enter your picks. You can leave them in the comments or email them to me at acm006 at googleemail. I'll compile a spreadsheet and put the link out there once everyone
EDIT: Please put your picks behind SPOILER tags. Come Saturday, I'll post the spreadsheet and everyone can see everyone else's picks
I'm a fan of your scoring system.
I realize now that I could have hid this behind a spoiler tag. But I didn't, and I can't edit this comment, so if someone would lend me an assist, I would appreciate it.
Ed: I got it ~Mags
Your point system seems at least like a good start. It should deter people from guessing a league average number of points for each team (or the rough equivalent of being conservative for all teams.) Deducting points for being far off also incentivizes guessing conservative point totals for everyone.
Another system you could consider is 5 points for dead on, 3 points for +/- 3 points, and 1 point for +/- 6 points. Guessing within 1 point sounds like a tall order--one draw when you expected a win would sink you. Being within a couple games still ought to show some reasonable idea that you knew what was going to happen. And if people score too few points, you wind up with a bunch of ties at low point values. A potential tiebreaker could be most teams predicted to be in the top half of the table.
I should probably stop thinking about this now because I could waste so much time thinking about this.
What kind of difference does it make guessing position in the table (1st-20th) vs. guessing season ending point totals.
Oh wait, I think I misunderstood. Were you talking about guessing the order in the table and not the season-ending point totals? I had assumed the latter, because most MLB prediction contests center around # of wins in the season (probably because there are so many divisions.)
I would guess that it's a lot more tractable to guess order in the talbe rather than season-ending point totals. If there happen to be a lot of draws in a season, you could overshoot on a bunch of teams in the table even if you got the rank order correct.
I was assuming the former. Take DG's entries as what I was thinking - the order of teams w/o any specific point totals.
I did think +/- 1 might be a little strong, but there's such an obvious imbalance of power in the Premier League that it didn't seem like such a tall order.
On the other hand, a few more points available in that tiered system might not be a bad idea.
I was thinking that +/- 2 gives 5 possible scoring positions (0, +1, +2, -1, and -2) five positions out of a possible 20 means that you have a 25% of just guessing and getting at least 1 point. That seems a bit much.
I feel that, although if there are 3, 2 and 1 points offered, it might be worth going that far each way (3 for right on, 2 for within 1, 1 for within 2). As is, if there are just a few surprises, there might be some real small point totals. I think it would make the end of the season more interesting, too, if there were more possibilities of a point here or there.
I mean, obviously, I'll play either way, though.
I will leave that to the math guys to figure out. I'm fine either way.
Ed: I added SPOILER tags. ~Mags
I suppose if Daneekas Ghost is playing, somebody's got to try to beat him.
A soccer challenge seems to be about the only thing you haven't won around here
I picked Bolton 8th, I don't think it will take much.
I hope this isn't too late
Nope, not too late at all. Entries are good until 10AM Central tomorrow when the first games kick-off.
I have no clue about who is good or not in the EPL..ro soccer in general. But I'll play
If you win after that disclaimer, wattsy, you're in trouble.